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Rhine Wine Punch
Take two quarts of some good rhine wine (if expense is to be avoided, a domestic may be used instead of an imported brand, and with good effect). One pineapple, six lemons, four oranges, half pine of Jamaica rum, half gill of Benedictine, half gill of Chartreuse, cup of Maraschino cherries. Squeeze the lemons and oranges, put them with the other fruit and the liquors in a punch bowl, and let them stand an hour or two. Ten minutes before the punch is to be served, place a large block of ice in the bowl and pour in the wine.
A late-Victorian bowl punch built on Riesling, with the fruit macerated ahead and the wine poured in cold at the last minute. Most of what needs translating here is the measurements and the ice.
- "Half pine" is half a pintA printer's slip for half a pint of Jamaica rum, or 8 fl oz. Nothing else in the recipe makes sense at that scale.
- GillsA gill is 4 fl oz, half a cup, so half a gill of Benedictine and half a gill of Chartreuse are 2 fl oz (4 tablespoons) each. They are seasoning, not base spirit, and the herbal Chartreuse in particular will dominate if you round up.
- Rhine wineDry to off-dry German Riesling, which is what the bowl is balanced around. A modern bone-dry Riesling or a Grüner will read sharper; something with a little residual sugar sits closer to the original, since the recipe adds no sugar at all.
- The pineappleThe instruction assumes you know to peel, core and cut it into thin slices or small chunks before it goes in the bowl. Whole or in wedges it contributes almost nothing during a two-hour maceration.
- Maraschino cherriesAt the time this was written these were cherries preserved in maraschino liqueur, not the bright red confection sold under that name now. Use cherries in syrup or liqueur, and add a spoonful of their liquid.
- The block of iceA single large block is the point: it chills without watering the punch down in the ten minutes before serving, and the dilution it does give is part of the balance. A large frozen bundt or loaf pan of water does the job; a bag of cubes does not.
- Order of operationsFruit, juice and spirits macerate at room temperature for an hour or two so the citrus oils and rum come together. The wine goes in cold, ten minutes before serving, so it keeps whatever liveliness it has.
- Yield and strengthAbout three quarts before ice, or roughly 20 punch cups of 5 fl oz. With a half pint of rum spread across two quarts of wine it drinks stronger than wine alone, which is worth mentioning to guests.
"Rhine wine" in an American cookbook generally meant Riesling from the Rheingau or Rheinhessen, which was among the better-regarded imported white wines sold in the United States; the parenthesis addresses tolerance for domestic substitutes, and New York and Ohio wineries did sell Riesling-style whites under Rhine-adjacent names. The bowl itself belongs to the tradition of the wine cup or cold punch served at receptions, weddings and summer parties, where a large block of ice in a footed bowl was as much a display as a cooling device. The two liqueur accents are period markers: Benedictine and Chartreuse were monastic imports that American bartenders used in small measures to give a sweet fruit punch an herbal backbone.